3 ms·

>After re-reading the post once again, because I honestly thought I was missing something obvious that would make the whole thing make sense, I started to wonde

by coldtea 9mo ago

>After re-reading the post once again, because I honestly thought I was missing something obvious that would make the whole thing make sense, I started to wonder if the author actually understands the scope of a computer language. The problem is you restrict the scope of a computer language to the familiar mechanisms and artifacts (parsers, compilers, formalized syntax, etc), instead of taking to be "something we instruct the computer with, so that it does what we want". >How does this even work? There is no universe I can imagine where a natural language can be universal, self descriptive, non ambiguous, and have a smaller footprint than any purpose specific language that came before it. Doesnt matter. Who said it needs to be "universal, self descriptive, non ambiguous, and have a smaller footprint than any purpose specific language that came before it"? It's enough that is can be used to instruct computers more succintly and at a higher level of abstraction, and that a program will come out at the end, which is more or less (doesn't have to be exact), what we wanted.

manuelabeledo 9mo ago
If you cannot even provide a clear definition of what you want it to be, then this is all science fiction.
- coldtea 9mo ago
  Doesn't have to be "a clear definition", a rough defition within some quite lax boundaries is fine. You can just say to Claude for example "Make me an app that accepts daily weight measurements and plots them in a graph" and it will make one. Tell it to use tha framework or this pattern, and it will do so too. Ask for more features as you go, in similar vague language. At some point your project is done. Even before AI the vast majority of software is not written with any "clear definition" to begin with, there's some rought architecture and idea, and people code as they go, and often have to clarify or rebuilt things to get them as they want, or discover they want something slightly different or the initial design had some issues and needs changing.
  - collingreen 9mo ago
    This is the most handwaving per paragraph I've ever seen. I think a fair summarization of your point is "LLM generated programs work well enough often enough to not need more constraints or validation than natural language", whatever that means. If you take that as a true thing then sure why would you go deeper (eg, I never look at the compiled bytecode my high level languages produce for this exact reason - I'm extremely confident that translation is right to the point of not thinking about it anymore). Most people who have built, maintained, and debugged software aren't ready to accept the premise that all of this is just handled well by LLMs at this point. Many many folks have lots of first hand experience watching it not be true, even when people are confidently claiming otherwise. I think if you want to be convincing in this thread you need to go back one step and explain why the LLM code is "good enough" and how you determined that. Otherwise it's just two sides talking totally past each other.
    - coldtea 9mo ago
      >This is the most handwaving per paragraph I've ever seen. Yes: "LLM generated programs work well enough often enough to not need more constraints or validation than natural language" if a fair summarization of my point. Not sure the purpose of "whatever that means" that you added. It's clear what it means. Thought, casual language seems to be a problem for you. Do you only always discuss in formally verified proofs? If so, that's a you problem, not an us or LLM problem :) >Most people who have built, maintained, and debugged software aren't ready to accept the premise that all of this is just handled well by LLMs at this point. I don't know who those "most people are". Most developers already hand those tasks to LLMs, and more will in the future, as it's a market/job pressure. (I'm not saying it's good or good enough as a quality assessment. In fact, I don't particularly like it. But I am saying it's "good enough" as in, people will deem it good enough to be shipped).
      - manuelabeledo 9mo ago
        > I don't know who those "most people are". Most developers already hand those tasks to LLMs, and more will in the future, as it's a market/job pressure. This is definitely not true. Outside of the US, very few devs can afford to pay for the computer and/or services. And in a couple years, I believe, devs in the US will be in for a rude awakening when the current prices skyrocket.

by coldtea 9mo ago

manuelabeledo 9mo ago

If you cannot even provide a clear definition of what you want it to be, then this is all science fiction.

coldtea 9mo ago
Doesn't have to be "a clear definition", a rough defition within some quite lax boundaries is fine. You can just say to Claude for example "Make me an app that accepts daily weight measurements and plots them in a graph" and it will make one. Tell it to use tha framework or this pattern, and it will do so too. Ask for more features as you go, in similar vague language. At some point your project is done. Even before AI the vast majority of software is not written with any "clear definition" to begin with, there's some rought architecture and idea, and people code as they go, and often have to clarify or rebuilt things to get them as they want, or discover they want something slightly different or the initial design had some issues and needs changing.
- collingreen 9mo ago
  This is the most handwaving per paragraph I've ever seen. I think a fair summarization of your point is "LLM generated programs work well enough often enough to not need more constraints or validation than natural language", whatever that means. If you take that as a true thing then sure why would you go deeper (eg, I never look at the compiled bytecode my high level languages produce for this exact reason - I'm extremely confident that translation is right to the point of not thinking about it anymore). Most people who have built, maintained, and debugged software aren't ready to accept the premise that all of this is just handled well by LLMs at this point. Many many folks have lots of first hand experience watching it not be true, even when people are confidently claiming otherwise. I think if you want to be convincing in this thread you need to go back one step and explain why the LLM code is "good enough" and how you determined that. Otherwise it's just two sides talking totally past each other.
  - coldtea 9mo ago
    >This is the most handwaving per paragraph I've ever seen. Yes: "LLM generated programs work well enough often enough to not need more constraints or validation than natural language" if a fair summarization of my point. Not sure the purpose of "whatever that means" that you added. It's clear what it means. Thought, casual language seems to be a problem for you. Do you only always discuss in formally verified proofs? If so, that's a you problem, not an us or LLM problem :) >Most people who have built, maintained, and debugged software aren't ready to accept the premise that all of this is just handled well by LLMs at this point. I don't know who those "most people are". Most developers already hand those tasks to LLMs, and more will in the future, as it's a market/job pressure. (I'm not saying it's good or good enough as a quality assessment. In fact, I don't particularly like it. But I am saying it's "good enough" as in, people will deem it good enough to be shipped).
    - manuelabeledo 9mo ago
      > I don't know who those "most people are". Most developers already hand those tasks to LLMs, and more will in the future, as it's a market/job pressure. This is definitely not true. Outside of the US, very few devs can afford to pay for the computer and/or services. And in a couple years, I believe, devs in the US will be in for a rude awakening when the current prices skyrocket.